Goldman Sachs: AI Investment Wave to Still Dominate S&P 500 Q2 Earnings Season, But Investors Starting to Focus on ROI

BlockBeats News, June 30th, Goldman Sachs strategist Ben Snider expects the AI investment wave to continue to dominate the S&P 500 second-quarter earnings season. He projects that S&P 500 component stocks will see a year-over-year earnings growth of about 22% in the second quarter; among them, NVIDIA and Micron may contribute approximately 40% of the overall earnings growth, while AI infrastructure-related stocks may contribute close to 60%.

This implies that, although AI-related stocks have recently experienced rotation and differentiation, from an earnings perspective, AI remains one of the most important sources of growth for US stocks. Goldman's assessment also suggests that the current bull market is not solely reliant on valuation expansion. Over the past year, the S&P 500 has risen by nearly 20%, primarily driven by earnings growth rather than a further increase in the price-earnings ratio.

However, the focus of the earnings season is shifting. Investors have broadly accepted that mega-cap cloud players like Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, etc., will continue their massive capital expenditures. The real question has become: Can these expenditures bring in enough revenue, profit margins, and cash flow? In other words, the market wants to see not just AI server orders but AI investment returns.